Medina Sane; Jury to Weigh Death Verdict

Teofilo (Junior) Medina, convicted last month of killing three convenience store clerks in a 1984 robbery spree, was found sane by a Superior Court jury Friday, clearing the way for his death penalty hearing next week.

Medina, 43, had insisted on the sanity hearing despite advice from his two attorneys, who had told him an insanity ruling was out of the question without supporting evidence from doctors who had interviewed him.

Three psychiatrists and a psychologist all found Medina mentally disturbed but said he was not insane.

Weighed Issue

Despite the predictability of the jury’s verdict on the sanity issue, Medina’s two lawyers, Ronald P. Kreber and James D. Stone, were visibly disappointed.

“Junior has no conscience, no sense of morality,” Stone said. “But it’s because he is so mentally disturbed.”

The jurors deliberated a day and a half and asked questions that indicated that they were seriously weighing the sanity issue, Stone said.

Stone remains optimistic about Medina’s chances of avoiding a death verdict in the penalty phase of his trial, scheduled to begin Monday. Jurors will choose between a death verdict or life without parole.

“I just can’t believe that a jury would vote to execute someone with Junior’s mental problems,” Stone said.

Medina, a native of Santa Ana, was arrested in Lake Elsinore, where he was living with a sister, on Nov. 7, 1984, shortly after he was spotted leaving the scene of an attempted robbery of a convenience store.

A stolen handgun found in his possession had been used in four convenience store killings during the previous three weeks, according to county criminalists.

Medina last month was convicted of murder in three of the killings. He has been formally accused of the fourth, but because it was in Corona and outside Orange County jurisdiction, it can only be brought up during the penalty phase of the trial.

Rape Charge

A rape charge also is included in the prosecution’s penalty phase case. But Medina’s lawyers brought up both the rape and the Corona shooting at his sanity hearing.

Medina, who testified during the sanity hearing, admitted stealing the handgun and admitted that he planned the robbery the day he was arrested. But he claimed that he could not remember any of the killings. He said he “probably” committed at least one of them.

During the two-week sanity hearing, Medina’s attorneys recounted a long history of Medina’s crimes, dating back to his early 20s: assault, robbery, shooting into a crowded bar and a rape conviction that led to a seven-year prison term in Arizona. Medina admitted that while in prison, he assaulted someone in the prison barbershop, knifed several inmates in the dining hall and was shot by a guard who tried to stop him from assaulting an inmate in the prison yard.

When Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown asked Medina if he was insane, Medina answered, “I guess that’s up to God.”